


My Neighbors the Browns

by PazithiGallifreya



Series: Writing the Future [3]
Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/M, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26994727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PazithiGallifreya/pseuds/PazithiGallifreya
Summary: The Brown Family returns to 1986.
Relationships: Emmett "Doc" Brown/Clara Clayton
Series: Writing the Future [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803457
Comments: 14
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is basically a series of interrelated vignettes about the Brown family as they settle into a time and place which is alien to 3/4 of them, and far less familiar-feeling to the fourth than he'd expected it to be. It takes place in between "The Persistence of Memory" and "Last Stop: This Town" but you shouldn't need to read either of them to follow this one, just note that Marty McFly has graduated from school and is about to leave with the Pinheads to go on tour and record their first album. I'm working on another chapter but can't exactly predict when I will get it finished and posted up so, uh...
> 
> The title is stolen from the Studio Ghibli film "My Neighbors the Yamadas" 
> 
> I try to proofread but quarantine-brain is a real thing, so drop a comment if you see anything glaringly awful.

1986\. It wasn't a year which Clara Clayton had ever given much thought to, growing up. She'd never live to see it, and it wasn't really quite far enough away to be truly enticing to the imagination. 2000? Sure, that's a nice round number there, and one could imagine plenty about the advances of science and society in that time. Flying machines had featured heavily in her childhood imagination, and she'd spent plenty of rainy days in her bedroom with science fiction novels, daydreaming about lighter-than-air travel linking far-flung corners of the world in a way which ocean-faring ships never could.

A jumbo jet streaked through the sky over Hill Valley, the noise of its engines following behind it after a slight delay. The sound, Emmett had told her, was actually moving slower than the airplane was moving. She knew about sound, of course, about frequency and amplitude, about waves in the air traveling like ripples in a pond. She'd read everything she could get her hands on growing up, her father's personal library exhausted by the time she was eight or nine, and had spent plenty of time in the local public library back in New Jersey with its rows and rows of books. She'd read plenty of fiction, of course, including her and Emmett's mutual favorite author, Jules Verne, but also history and science as well.

The neighbors had talked, of course. Gossip was the primary entertainment for most folk in those days. It was unseemly for a girl to be seen with her nose jammed in a book so much of the time. Or up a tree, peering into holes at birds' nests, with her skinny legs dangling below and her dress stained and rumpled up. Sometimes she felt a slight twinge of guilt at all the grief and trouble she'd given her parents as a child, but at the time she hadn't understood why the boys should be allowed to do these things, but the girls were expected to do very little at all, other than sewing and house chores, and, eventually, looking for a proper husband and being a proper wife and a proper mother.

Clara had never been a proper anything in her life, and had no particular ambition to change that. She didn't mind sewing, really, it was a useful skill to have, and chores needed to be done, whoever did them, but she'd have sooner died than limit her world to nothing more than that. She certainly had long since given up any notion of finding a husband, proper or otherwise, by the time she'd boarded a train headed for Hill Valley in 1885.

Emmett, though. Her dear Emmett. He never cared if she tore her dress, or muddied her stockings. He brought her books simply because he thought she'd like them, and would happily spend half the night discussing or debating whatever topic she was fixated on at a given moment, if she was in the mood for it, and never spoke down to her as though she were some kind of imbecile, as so many men did. The first time she'd absconded with an old pair of his overalls and one of his shirts, to start digging a vegetable garden behind their house, he'd come home from the forge, grinned at her, and grabbed another spade to help her finish before sunset, despite having spent the entire day shoeing horses.

They'd made a good life for themselves in Hill Valley, built upon Emmett's blacksmith work and the little cabin she'd bought with what remained of her inheritance. She taught the local children their letters and a bit of history and arithmetic, and would have taught them much more if their parents had cared to let her. The mayor regularly dropped by to chat with Emmett in his forge, and the local bartender always saved just a little sarsaparilla for him (he still couldn't hold his liquor, the poor dear). If a couple of the ladies in town whispered behind her back, well, it was nothing she wasn't used to, and she had far more friends than detractors. Above all else she had Emmett by her side, and she didn't care what they thought. Especially once they'd finished the train, she was content with the knowledge that the future was different, that she had seen with her own eyes the sort of possibilities most of them would never dare dream of.

They'd left it behind, though, all of it. She remembered the last full day they'd spent in the late 19th century Hill Valley she'd known and grown to love. Emmett had made a long day of it in the forge, working past supper time to finish up what remained of the town's orders. A couple of horses needed shoeing, a local farmer needed a bent plow blade repaired, and at last Emmett finished up a new set of kitchen knives for the wife of the new physician who'd just arrived in town the month before. Clara had finished packing up what they'd decided to bring with them on the train the night before, and had little to occupy her hands or mind with that day. The boys spent their last hours at a neighbor's house, playing with the children there that they'd played with near daily almost since birth.

Clara had perched herself on a bench in Emmett's forge, watching him labor over the anvil for perhaps the last time. As usual for the summertime, he'd long since given up on the shirt, taking the soaked garment off by mid-morning and leaving it draped over a stool in the corner, working only in a long leather apron and trousers. For her part, at least, Clara didn't mind it. She'd leaned back against the wall behind her and watched him hammering away at glowing iron, wiry muscle playing over his shoulders and back as the fire from the forge glinted off trailing beads of sweat.

He'd finished for the day, forever really, and the forge had been tidied up, all of his experiments and gadgets cleared away. What tools he hadn't already packed up, he'd left behind, for whomever arrived on the next train to take the part of the town's blacksmith. Would he miss it, she'd asked him, over a supper of cold chicken sandwiches and summer berries with cream the night before. He'd shrugged at her and said he'd never had trouble finding ways to occupy his time.

A paper sack on a kitchen shelf in their little log cabin home had held a rather anachronistic orange plastic bottle with a number of oblong pills for the last month, obtained from a medical clinic in 2006 that her husband had visited with their son. She'd had to cut them in half daily and coat them in butter or lard for Verne to be able to swallow them down. They looked like something one would give to a horse, not a child of scarcely ten years. But Verne would have to take them for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of his life, although there was a small chance the problem would go away during adolescence, the doctor had told them, but that was several years away. She'd gotten a long explanation from Emmett about the inner workings of the human immune system, and all the myriad ways it can go wrong, and the means to keeping it in check when it turned on parts of the body itself, which in this case was a daily regiment of pills her son had already grown to despise.

The time train she and her husband had built together was a beautiful thing, sleek and dark, but it was nonetheless large, loud, unwieldy, and rather difficult to conceal. Verne's medication itself was easily obtainable by the mid 1980's, and it was a familiar era for Emmett, at least, so they'd decided it would be less risky all the way around to return to her husband's native time rather than risk endless trips back and forth. Emmett concocted some story about them meeting in New Jersey where she was to say he'd been living for several months and had married her only recently. He'd set the time train's destination to nearly a year after he'd last been seen in Hill Valley of the 1980's to make it plausible. He'd also told her to claim their children were hers from a previous marriage, which is something she'd rankled at, even if she saw the reasoning behind it. The children had far too much of Emmett in them for anyone to really buy it for long, she thought, but she hadn't been able to think of anything better, so she'd agreed.

* * *

The construction workers building the new family home had packed up and left for the night. Emmett had spent the day puttering about in the old converted garage, unnecessarily rearranging equipment and tools for the umpteenth time. He had a few projects that had been left behind, half-finished, before he'd arrived in 1885. They'd been sitting for only a few months, technically, but from Emmett's point of view, they'd been abandoned over a decade ago. Somehow, he'd simply picked them back up again as though no time at all had passed.

She and Emmett had been on a few adventures of their own, with the boys and without, making visits to the future and the past both, but they'd mutually decided to take a break for a while, giving themselves time to get their sons settled into the late 20th century. Both of the children had memorized the story they were meant to tell about where they'd grown up and who they were, and so far they'd stuck to it, as far as Clara knew, but the real test would come when they began school.

Clara finished cleaning up the small kitchen, wiping up the puddles of water which Verne inevitably splashed everywhere whenever it was his turn to wash dishes. She could hear Jules snoring on the sofa from the other room, and Verne shifting on the easy chair. It had been cramped these last few weeks, even moreso than their cabin had been, but soon enough they'd have a real home again. Things were going pretty well, she thought.

* * *

It had been thirteen years, as the chronometer flies, since Dr. Emmett L. Brown had lived in the twentieth century. The older of his two boys had just turned twelve, and the youngest was ten. They were bright boys, in their own very individual ways, but so differing in personality that it was a wonder they were related at all sometimes. Jules was soft-spoken, introspective, and almost painfully shy at times, preferring to spend his time on solitary pursuits (reminding Emmett rather sharply of himself at the same age, it had to be said). Verne was a bundle of barely-contained energy, chattering constantly, artistically inclined, a natural comic, and, at least in the 1890's, had been generally well-liked by his peers.

The choice to come to 1986 had not been an easy one. He knew it well enough, despite having spent so long away from it, but his family were strangers in this here & now. He and his wife had spent many a night agonizing over the decision, but in the end, they'd decided it was for the best, given Verne's condition. Verne, at least, seemed to be settling in to the local culture without much difficulty, and Jules was coping reasonably well, all things considered.

Emmett, however, was feeling a bit stressed, actually. He pushed the shopping cart through the narrow aisle, squinting at his wife's beautiful but very small handwriting on the list she'd given him that morning. Emmett fished around in his shirt pocket for his reading glasses and swore softly under his breath when he came up empty-handed. He'd probably left them out in the van, again. It was more trouble than it was worth to leave the half-full cart in the middle of the supermarket and go to retrieve them, so he squinted harder, his face scrunching up like the California Raisins on the advertisement taped up in the supermarket's front window he'd passed on his way in.

A young woman with a small child babbling away in the seat of her shopping cart stopped just behind him, reaching for jars of apple sauce. Emmett smiled at the baby, who looked to be around a year and a half old, reminded of his own children at the same age. He pulled a silly face at the little girl, and was rewarded with a peal of laughter. The mother looked up at him, smiling at first herself at her baby's amusement, until she noticed who, precisely, was entertaining her daughter. Eyes immediately narrowing at Emmett, she hurried along, pushing her cart past him roughly, clipping his hip with the corner of it, and around the corner and out of sight before he had time to react.

Oh, right. _The town lunatic_. That much hadn't changed at all. He rubbed at the bruise forming on his hip and sighed before going his own way, now in a hurry himself to finish the chore as quickly as possible.

* * *

Everything was so busy in those early months – building the house, mainly, which required constant surveillance by her husband, who did not trust contractors to follow his blueprints or even the broader precepts of the scope of work on their own. There was also the issue of the boys' schooling; Clara was content to continue their education herself at home, but Emmett had talked her into enrolling them in the local public school system. _“They must learn to fit in here, and time spent socializing with peers will be instructive toward that end.”_

Emmett wasn't wrong, of course, but it still took some time for him to get the necessary paperwork together. Most of it was counterfeited, naturally; you can't submit a birth certificate for a child with a date of birth listed as 1887 without raising eyebrows. Emmett had become quite skilled at forgery over the years, which gave Clara some pause, although realistically she knew it was for their own safety to blend in. He wasn't using it for theft, after all. At any rate, Jules & Verne had missed more than half of the school year by the time they had passable birth certificates (including a fictional father's name, which nearly gave her a headache to look at), fictitious transcripts from real schools in New Jersey that she hoped the local school board would not question, and entirely legitimate vaccination records from the local pediatrician. In the end they'd decided it would be simpler to enroll them next fall, and Clara kept herself busy catching them up in a hundred years of history and scientific advance she'd had to teach herself at the same time.

Perhaps that's why she hadn't noticed until now, in late February, the problem with the stars. A nascent but growing panic settled in the pit of her belly, although the rational part of her mind knew there had to be a reasonable explanation as to why the future seemed to hold far fewer stars in the sky than the past.

“What happened to them, Emmett?”

Her husband set down his tools for the moment. The time train was a project that never seemed to end, even after it was complete. Emmett constantly tinkered with it, making small improvements to the design. Emmett looked up at his wife standing in the doorway of his old garage (now returned to its primary function as a workshop), while grabbing a shop rag from the bench that Clara would have deemed too filthy to be useful for anything to mop sweat from his forehead. A streak of engine grease across her husband's forehead was predictably left behind, but she'd do something about that later.

“Hm? Happened to what, Clara?” He squinted at her, a mere shadow outlined by the overly bright new flood light he'd installed recently just outside the garage door.

“The stars, Emmett, the stars! Over half of them are simply gone!” Clara moved indoors, shutting the door on the cold air behind her, and rushing over to her husband.

Emmett yelped slightly when she jammed her freezing hands into the warmth underneath his shirt without preamble, but pulled her close nonetheless, ducking down for a quick kiss before stepping back. “Nothing, Clara, they're still there, up in the heavens, where they've always been.”

“Well, why can't I see them, then? I've adjusted and readjusted my telescope more times than I can count, but nothing seems to work!”

Emmett rubbed at his chin for a moment, leaning one hip against the workbench. Astronomy had always been Clara's area of expertise, although her husband was no slouch in the subject. “I believe the term is 'light pollution,' Clara. The street lights and other artificial lighting from the city simply... drown out the starlight, as it were.”

“They why don't they just shut them off after midnight!?” Clara already knew the answer that would come as soon as the question formed behind her lips, but couldn't stop the protest from escaping. It seemed like such a trivial thing, among all the problems that the twentieth century had dropped in her lap, but it nonetheless invoked a kind of fundamental horror deep within her.

On cue, her husband provided the answer she already knew. “Public safety, primarily. Traffic accidents and all manner of crime are reduced by well-lit streets.”

Clara bit her tongue, pushing down a sudden impulse to begin sobbing. Things were not really so dire, but a thousand little pressures had been building for weeks and, to be blunt, she was feeling a bit homesick on top of everything else. Would this new century ever begin to feel familiar? Emmett blinked down at her for a moment before wrapping her up in his arms tightly. “Why don't we spend a few days outside of town? You can pack up your telescope and we can go camping up in the hills. The boys could use a bit of fresh air too, hm?” Clara sighed against her husband's shoulder, blinking back a few tears but, for the moment, mollified by his suggestion. The Sierra Nevada, at least, was always the Sierra Nevada, and she doubted it could have changed entirely in one century.

Two days later, Clara was laying under the open sky with her husband, in a hidden corner among the boulders of California's mountains, the vast expanse of the milky way turning above them the only source of light. It was cold this time of year, even moreso up at this elevation, but she didn't mind it, really. She snuggled closer to Emmett, who was now lightly snoring away with his arms loosely wrapped around her. Drawing the blankets they were wrapped in up around her shoulders, she soaked in the living warmth of his bare skin against hers. They'd have to get up and dress well before dawn - Jules especially was a predictably early riser - but under an undimmed night sky she felt, for the first time in months, that she'd finally arrived home.

* * *

Clara had designated a large patch of yard off to the side of the new house, bound by a high fence on two adjoining sides, the garage on a third, and the house itself on the fourth, for her new vegetable garden. There was something to be said for the convenience of the latter 20th century supermarket – all manner of produce was trucked in from heavens-knew-where at all times of the year, but she'd found much of it to be rather disappointing in terms of flavor and quality. The tomatoes were the absolute worst offender, she thought, with their offensively pale, bland interiors and soft mealy texture, but the sweet corn, peppers, onions, and carrots left something to be desired as well.

At any rate, it was already early spring, and she needed something to do. Marty McFly, her husband's best friend, had also packed up with his band and left to head east that morning. Emmett had made his farewells and retreated to his laboratory, and the boys had covered everything in their respective curricula that Emmett had somehow obtained from the local schools for the grade they'd missed out on. As such, she had little left to do to prepare them for the upcoming school year. Verne typically needed a little extra help with mathematics, and Jules often struggled with the language arts, but on the whole, the were among the easiest pupils she'd had in her teaching career. They'd both inherited their father's brains (and hers as well, Emmett forever insisted whenever she commented upon the subject) and were keeping themselves busy well enough without her at the moment. Jules was spending more and more time at Emmett's side in the lab, helping his father on his latest project - something to do with traveling “sideways” in time. While she had some idea of where he was going, eventually Clara would demand a full explanation, but there was little point in worrying about it until he had a functioning prototype. Verne would occasionally be found in the lab as well, but lately he had absconded with her watercolor set and had kept himself busy filling up blocks of paper as fast she could buy them for the last two weeks.

The earth, however, was proving to be rather more stubborn and unyielding than her children. The soil was thin and poor, and full of gravel. She was already mentally calculating the amount of manure it would take to get even a modest harvest from it while she bashed away at it with a long-handled spade and hoe. Pulling off the leather gardening gloves, she leaned back on the handle of her spade and glanced up at the sky. The sun was climbing toward its apex and her stomach rumbled at her as well. She swept dirt off her front but it was a futile gesture. She doubted Emmett would care about his old canvas overalls, already stained, singed, and torn from years in a forge, but she'd need to change before she could even think about lunch.

* * *

It wasn't exactly the massive turn-of-the-century American Craftsman architectural masterpiece that his childhood home had been, by any stretch. For starters, it was not quite a third of the square footage of its predecessor – two and a half bathrooms, three bedrooms (Jules & Verne had both loudly insisted that they would no longer share a room) and a spare office/guest room (whose bed would probably end up occupied by Marty McFly more often than any other guest), a kitchen just spacious enough for him and his wife to work in side-by-side without tripping over each other's feet, and decently sized dining and living rooms. Pretty bog-standard, all told. He had plans for later embellishments, but at the moment it would have to do. He'd at least had the foresight to have the basement finished out, and Clara had already claimed one corner of it for her sewing. There was also a brand new attached garage that, unlike the old one, actually held vehicles. A rebuilt DeLorean time machine was currently well hidden under a tarp, parked next to the rather more mundane van still emblazoned with “Dr. E. Brown, 24 Hr. Scientific Services” on both sides.

Emmett still had the occasional dream of wandering about the massive home he'd inherited from his parents, and later had let burn to the ground. (He'd had good reasons at the time, and none of them had been about insurance money, but that was another story entirely.) The new home was finished, though, and weeks later it still smelled strongly of fresh paint. They'd packed as much of the furniture as would fit on the time train, along with various personal belongings, but much had been left behind, abandoned in the four room cabin his family had called home for over a decade. He'd retrieved a few more bits of furniture from the old garage, but, wandering through the rooms now, the house still felt half-empty. Clara assured him it would end up plenty cluttered and lived-in sooner or later.

Emmett pulled a box from a shelf in a hallway linen closet, taking a quick count of his remaining stock. He didn't want to sell the mint-condition golden age comics too frequently, lest he raise suspicions, but his backlog of potential patents to sell was running somewhat low now, as he'd been neck-deep in a rather more personal project in recent weeks. He'd initially not given too much thought to their encounter with Marty McFly and the young man's bout of existential panic immediately upon their arrival in 1986, but his wife had given voice to certain doubts over the ensuing months, and raised questions he had no real answers to. He was a man of science, after all, and such quandaries certainly provided a ripe avenue of inquiry.

Having taken stock, he closed the box and packed it away again. Clara always gave them a long stare with a pinched expression when she caught sight of them, even if she never made comment. Emmett didn't think she entirely approved of his means of making money, even if she understood the necessity. Still, he tried to keep them out of sight. He had too many uncomfortable memories of his own mother biting her tongue around his father, although the reasons back then had been vastly different.

Emmett heard a shout from the yard outside. Glancing out of a window, he saw that Verne had finally managed to pester Jules into some sort of game. Jules had never been much interested in physical pursuits, and at twelve, such play was of even more diminished interest. Sibling rivalry had been a problem more or less since Verne was born; Jules' quieter nature was often disturbed by Verne's bounteous energy, and Jules' occasional haughtiness frequently bruised Verne's pride, but such moments reminded Emmett that despite their bouts of animosity, they did still fundamentally love one another.

Sometimes Emmett wondered how different his childhood might have been if his parents had had subsequent children after himself. If, perhaps, the pressure placed upon him as their only offspring might have been spread about somewhat, if nothing else. Their marriage had not been as fractious as some, but his father - a lawyer and eventually a judge - had been a harsh and demanding man with a very rigid set of beliefs and standards, and neither his wife nor his son had been spared. He still sometimes woke in the night in a sheen of sweat, having dreamed of a larger shadow pursuing him through that old mansion, shouting accusations of being lazy, disobedient, and much else besides. Emmett struggled, sometimes, to find a balance with his own boys when it came to discipline. Upon Jules' birth he'd made his own quiet resolution to provide him with a better childhood than his own had been, and again with Verne.

Thankfully, he was not alone. The sound of the back door swinging shut was followed by footsteps he immediately recognized as Clara's. Emmett shut the closet door and went downstairs to meet her.

* * *

“G- _golly_!”

Emmett never failed to smile at Clara's signature minced oaths. He'd yet to hear her actually curse in all the years he'd been married to her, no matter what insult or calamity befell her. Perhaps she was saving them all up for a special occasion, substituting an array of “gollys,” “goshes,” and “oh, sugar!s” in the meantime. Clara Clayton Brown was no blushing violet, by any stretch, but certain remnants of the genteel manners that her Victorian parents had inculcated in her had never entirely faded. His wife was currently hopping on one foot and grabbing onto a door frame while trying to escape from a pair of his overalls that were several sizes too large. Looking up at the sudden arrival of a shadow, she scowled at him. “Well, Emmett, are you going to help me or just stand there laughing at me?”

Emmett rushed to her side, grasping an elbow firmly to keep his wife from falling on her head. “Laugh at you, Clara? Perish the thought. I'd never do such a thing!” Finally free of the last leg of the combative overalls, she huffed at him and tossed the dirt-stained garment at his head. Pulling it off, he laughed aloud this time, tossing the overalls over the back of a chair at the kitchen table, sending a shower of dirt onto the tiled floor.

“Emmett! To think I was trying _not_ to track dirt everywhere...” Shrugging in defeat, Clara, now wearing nothing but one of Emmett's exceedingly colorful button-ups (a red number bedecked with what looked like little stars and lightning bolts) and her own underwear, went to the chair, pulling it out to sit down and strip off her socks as well. Emmett ducked into the kitchen to fill a glass with ice and cold water before returning to her with his peace offering, which she accepted without further comment. She drank half of the glass down in one go, then set it down before she leaned back in the chair, stretching her bare legs out and propping them in Emmett's lap. Emmett picked up one tired foot to massage and smirk as his wife's head tipped back and her toes curled up in response. “You have a rather impressive streak of mud on your forehead, by the way.”

Clara scowled without opening her eyes, and used her unoccupied foot to poke him in the belly with a toe in response. “What are you fixing us for lunch, then, Emmett? Since I clearly need a bath immediately. The boys are probably famished by now.”

Swapping to the other foot, Emmett hummed, considering the question. “I suppose I could order pizza?”

Clara clasped her fingers behind her head, clearly enjoying the impromptu massage. “Fine, order two, you know the boys can inhale an entire pie between them. And at least half of ours had better be anchovy-free!”

* * *

It was easy sometimes for Clara to forget an entire world existed outside of the warmth of their home - the house, with its persistent fresh-paint smell (which would eventually wear off, she supposed), the old garage long ago converted into her husband's cluttered personal laboratory, her vegetable garden which was finally shaping up to be something, even if only the slightest hint of green poked up through the freshly tilled earth at the moment.

A high sturdy fence surrounded the property, shielding much of it from public view, but necessity dictated that she occasionally had to leave it and deal with the rest of humanity. Feeding two adults and two growing children, at the very least, necessitated a couple of trips to the supermarket each week, and, having recently been taught to drive and provided with a convincing-looking drivers' license by Emmett, occasionally she would run by the garden center or hardware store in town. On her own, now in modern clothes (even if half of it was her husband's somewhat oversized shirts), she rarely drew all that much attention. When out with her husband, the kind of stares they received had puzzled her at first, as had the cold reception they got from shop clerks about half the time. She remembered the first time she'd noticed strangers rushing away from them, or occasionally following them from what they probably believed was a surreptitious distance. Such reactions ranged from outright fear (most often adults) to frank curiosity (usually children).

“Emmett, what on Earth is wrong with the people in this town, do they all think you have some kind of disease?,” she'd asked once, as they loaded groceries into the back of the van. He'd paused with a sack of vegetables halfway between the cart and the van, looking off into the mid-distance, before mumbling something about having “a bit of a reputation” and continuing his task. She'd let it go at the time.

Looking at the current state of her husband's garage/laboratory, she thought now that perhaps she shouldn't have. The toilet paper had been annoying enough, especially where it had been tossed up over the roof and into the branches of a nearby tree, and then rained on before dawn. Emmett had pulled the ladder out of storage and cleaned the sodden paper out of the gutters and Verne had, over her shouted protest, scrambled up the tree to remove the rest.

The eggs, already rotting when thrown, if the smell told her anything, were far worse. “Emmett, this goes far beyond a mere prank! Jules spent two days scrubbing that vulgar spray paint from the fence last week, and now this? I don't see any other houses around here being targeted this way!”

Emmett rolled his head, scratched at his scalp, hummed to himself, and completely failed to look her in the eye. “I'm sorry, Clara... this is... it's my fault entirely, it has nothing to do with you or the boys, I assure you.”

Clara paused for a moment, not quite certain what to say. “What do you mean it's _your fault_? I don't know who precisely is doing this, but I can't imagine what you could have done to warrant this constant harassment! And don't think I haven't noticed how some people act around you in town--”

“It's not a big deal, Clara! It probably _is_ just teenage boys. Do you know how Marty actually met me, according to him? In the original timeline, at least... My counterpart there hadn't needed to approach him with a job offer, he'd literally pulled the child off of his fence after Marty tried to sneak into the lab on a dare by other boys... I've seen plenty of this nonsense over the years, it rarely escalates to anything genuinely dangerous. After all, I'm some kind of 'mad scientist,' apparently, and they like to dare one another to approach my laboratory. I believe they swap stories that I use young boys as experimental subjects, or some such nonsense. Don't be too angry with them, Clara, it can only be expected when one is as... ah, _eccentric_ as I am. I suppose it's simply the price to pay for stubbornly ignoring social convention.”

Clara stared at her husband as a mixture of pity for his situation and apparent self-flagellation, and a sense indignant anger at the injustice of it all, fought for dominance within her. The anger was rather swiftly winning the battle. How could they? How _dare_ they? Her husband was the sweetest, gentlest man she'd ever known, and the wagging tongues of this town had apparently spent decades slandering him for no good reason. Turning back to the sight of the previous night's vandalism of her family's home, she wanted to scream and cry at the same time. If she ended up snapping at the occasional rude shopkeeper over the following weeks, well, Emmett would just have to forgive her.

The twentieth century, thus far, was not making a very good impression on her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter catches up to, then passes the events of "Last Stop: This Town" and this time it probably *won't* make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read that one.
> 
> Content Warning for a reference to past corporal punishment of a child. It's not explicit but it's in there, be warned if you are liable to find it upsetting.

Jules Brown was twelve years old, although at times one might think he was a very weary, long-suffering middle-aged man. He certainly had his patience tried at times, usually by his brother, Verne. Verne was only a year and a half younger, but Jules was convinced at times that Verne was still five years old, what with the way he constantly carried on.

The summer was proving to be a hot one, and he could feel sweat beading up on his forehead and the back of his neck, and the cotton t-shirt he wore stuck to his back any time he stood up after having sat down for a while. The shirt had some sort of ridiculous looking cartoon turtles on it, but it was what had been clean that morning, so he'd worn it. His mother had assured him she'd have a stack of clean laundry on his bed by the end of the week, at least. He still wasn't sure what a “teenage mutant ninja” was, turtle or otherwise, although Verne assured him it was something “awesome.” He'd seen the creatures on one of the loud cartoons his brother favored on Saturday morning, but hadn't bothered to pay much attention to them. His parents had come home with a whole sack full of second-hand clothing appropriate to the current era a few days after they'd arrived here, and while he'd been given a few decent long-sleeve button-downs (which were simply too hot to wear at the moment), most of them were t-shirts which had such cartoon abominations printed on them. His brother had been instantly delighted with the garish characters, and spent hours in front of the television set absorbing the brain-rotting nonsense. Jules had soon voiced his concern for his brother's developing mind (and sanity) to his parents, who had been too preoccupied with other matters to be fully aware of the extent of Verne's new addiction. While his mother had immediately moved to limit his brother's time in front of the device to an hour a day, dependent upon Verne completing his lessons and chores, his brother still seemed to end up a veritable encyclopedia of popular culture nonsense.

Jules had complained again a few weeks later to his father, who had simply squeezed his shoulder, told him to try not to be too harshly critical of his brother, and suggested he at least view some of the cartoons himself in order to not seem too out of step with his peers once he began school in the fall. Jules had balked at the suggestion, although the obvious worry in his father's expression had given him a moment's pause. Nonetheless, the loud music, garish colors, and flashing light of the television grated on him and he could not watch the bedeviled thing for more than half an hour without ending up with a splitting headache. He didn't mind the one channel that at least ran something vaguely educational at times, and would occasionally watch something called National Geographic, which had resulted in Verne declaring him to be a bigger nerd than one of his cartoon characters called "Egon Spengler" or somesuch.

This morning, however, his mother had gotten fed up with Verne trying to sneak extra time in front of said television, and chased the both of them outdoors, telling them to be back by supper time and preferably not before. Somehow Jules always ended up punished as well, whenever his brother misbehaved. Thus, he had little to occupy himself with at the time. Verne had dragged him to a local park and was currently on one of the park playground's swings, trying to go high enough to jump past the sand surrounding it into the grassy area beyond. Jules had already shouted at him not to hurt himself, but to no avail. He remembered the last time Verne had tried to pull this stunt, and he ended up having to half-carry his brother home with a swollen ankle. Shaking his head, Jules shifted on the bench and pulled the paperback novel he'd been reading back out, jamming his nose between the pages and trying not to pay any more attention to his brother than strictly necessary.

“Hey.”

Jules turned a page of his book. It was a cheap copy of a novel that his parents had a much better (and much more costly), first edition of back home, but he wasn't allowed to remove that one from the house. _Journey to the Center of the Earth_. It was written by the man he and his brother had been named after, and while he'd given little thought to the author until recently, he'd decided this summer to see what all the fuss was about.

“ _Hey!_ ”

Jules looked up, shocked to discover that the voice had been addressing _him_. A girl stood in front of him. She had a mass of dark brown hair pulled up into a ponytail on one side of her head, a mess of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a pair of rather thick glasses. He was quite certain he'd never met her.

“What are you reading?”

Jules opened his mouth slightly, but was still too stunned to form words. Shaking himself and feeling vaguely embarrassed, he lifted the book up so the girl could see the title on the cover.

“Oh. I've read that one, 's'alright I guess. Do you like science fiction, then? Do you watch Star Trek?”

Jules blinked at her, understanding some of what she said, but “Star Trek” was lost on him. Another cartoon, probably, but not one that had made it into Verne's repertoire. She pulled a face at his lack of response, scrunching up her nose as though he smelled offensive, but sat down on the bench near him anyway. _What a strange girl_.

“I'm Jessica. What's your name?” Jules continued to stare at her. “Can you talk, or what?”

Jules closed his book with a thumb left jammed in between the pages to save his place. “My name is Jules, and I can speak just fine, I just wasn't, um, expecting anyone to, uh...”

“What, talk to you? Do you go to school around here? I've never seen you before. I go to Hill Valley Middle School. You know, the new one they built last year? I'll be in seventh grade this year. Do you go to the Catholic school then?”

Jules scratched at the back of his neck, trying to decide if he even wanted to continue this conversation. Unlike Verne, who now appeared to be in the middle of a game of tag with four other children. Verne seemed to fit in wherever he went. _Whenever_ he went. Everyone loved Verne. Verne, Verne, Verne... Jules shook his head. “No, we moved here recently from, ah, New Jersey. I haven't been to any school here yet.”

“New Jersey? You don't sound like you're from New Jersey. I have an uncle who lives there.”

Jules suddenly felt extremely frustrated, not just with this girl – Jessica, she'd said her name was – but with everything. They were here because of Verne, of course. His brother always had to be the center of everything. Of course he'd had to go and break out in some disgusting rash over almost his entire body, sending their parents into a tizzy trying to figure out what was wrong with him. The medication he was now taking at least seemed to be working, but Jules still didn't understand why the entire family had to be relocated to another century to obtain it. Couldn't their father just go pick the stuff up and bring it back? They had a train that moved through _time_ , after all. “Well, that's where I'm from, terribly sorry if I don't speak the way you'd prefer.” Jules dug in his pocket for the scrap of paper he'd been using as a bookmark and jammed it into his book, standing up.

Jessica stood as well, grabbing his sleeve when he began to walk away from her. “Look, I didn't mean it like that, okay? You don't have to run off in a huff, I was just trying to be friendly. You looked kinda lonely, alright?”

Jules grit his teeth, biting down an impulse to be rude. This girl was annoying, he'd decided, but probably didn't mean any actual harm. How could she know what he was going through? It was impossible. “Fine, it's... it's fine. I'm not lonely, I'm just trying to keep an eye on my stupid baby brother.” He gestured toward Verne, who was now standing on top of the slide with his arms raised upward, heavens knew why.

Jessica laughed him. “Yeah, I have a kid brother about that age too. Why do parents always make us look after them? Not like we picked 'em out, right?”

Jules glanced at his brother, now doing a somersault down the slide to the small crowd surrounding him. He landed flat on his back in the dirt, of course, and would arrive home for dinner filthy as usual. Guilt nipped at the back of his mind, despite his spiteful mood. “I guess I could do worse, but I definitely had other plans for today.”

“Oh. Well. Hey, when you're not stuck babysitting, maybe I can show you around town later, since you just got here recent? Do you have a bike?”

Jules rolled his shoulders and jammed his novel under an elbow before shoving his hands in his pockets, giving up any thought of escape. This girl was clearly determined to befriend him, and while he could easily be distasteful enough to change her mind, he decided not to. His parents had been telling him for weeks now to keep an open mind about the 20th century and the people who lived there, and to try and make at least a few friends. Maybe if he let this girl drag him around the town a bit, it would at least get them off his back for a while. “I don't own a bicycle, but we could tour the town later, perhaps. Tomorrow?”

“Sure, I'll meet you here after lunch. Maybe... two o'clock?”

“If my parents don't object, then I'll be here tom--” A chorus of shouts followed by a familiar wailing heralded Verne's predictable fate as the boy jumped off the monkey bars and landed badly, a gaggle of other children swarming around him to survey the carnage. Jules sighed deeply. “It was nice to meet you, Jessica, but I'd best go scrape my brother up off the ground. I'll see you tomorrow, perhaps...”

It was half an hour after dinner was usually set on the table when Jules finally dragged a limping Verne through the door. His mother predictably dropped everything she was doing and began fussing over her precious little baby immediately, rushing for ice from the freezer and a bottle of Tylenol from the cabinet. Jules threw his tattered paperback into a corner of the sofa before dropping himself heavily onto the cushions as well. Jules' father materialized in the doorway of the den to peer at him with concern, and Jules shrugged at him in wordless response before leaning his head back and closing his eyes. He was content to stay there and not move again until his mother called them to the dinner table. The cushions dipped beside him and he looked up, clearly unable to hide his expression well enough to avoid interest.

“Jules, I know these past weeks have been, well, a bit difficult. For all of us, really, but for you especially. You know you can always come talk to me, or your mother, hm?”

Jules chewed at his lip, unsure if he wanted to open that particular container of annelids. “I'm fine, papa. I think... I think just miss our old home. At least _Verne_ seems happy enough.” He tried to keep the note of resentment out of his voice, but as an arm wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him tightly against his father's side, he knew he'd failed. He let his head drop against his father's shoulder, unable to put anything else of the boiling morass inside his head into actual coherent words, and hoped he wouldn't be pressed.

“Boys, dinner is ready, come along before it gets cold!”

Jules leaned up to start moving, but his father momentarily squeezed him tight again, dropping a quick kiss on top of his head. His father let him go without further ado, levering himself up off the cushions and wandering away toward the kitchen table. Jules huffed a sigh and followed him. He could smell the garlic and rosemary wafting off the roasted chicken, and the butter currently melting into the potatoes and peas. He ate his dinner, letting the conversation pass in one ear and out the other unchallenged, led mostly by Verne chattering on about the other children at the park and all the feats he'd accomplished before he'd sprained an ankle (yet again). He heard his mother clucking at Verne for his risky behavior and his father telling Verne to be more careful, the usual predictable refrain after such a day. Jules pushed his mashed potatoes into a lump with his fork before scraping the side of it across the top to flatten it off. One line formed the main road through town, peas stood in for city hall, the general store, the shop that sold leather goods, his father's forge... “What about you, Jules?” Another line traced across the expanse outside of town, following the curve of the railroad tracks. “ _Jules_?” A bit of digging with his fork created a passable Eastwood Ravine.

“ _JULES!”_

He flinched, sending an errant farmhouse-pea flying across the table to land neatly in his brother's glass of water. “Uh, sorry, mama... I was just, um, thinking.” Verne howled with laughter and Jules sneered at him.

“Are you planning to actually eat that map of yours, son?” He pushed his leftovers, long gone cold, toward his father, who gleefully picked up the plate and scraped all of 19th century Hill Valley onto his own before dropping Jules' plate back on his place mat with nothing but chicken bones.

“Jules," his mother continued calmly, "I asked how your day was.”

His mother watched him expectantly. He wasn't going to escape without giving an answer, clearly. “Fine, I guess? Verne pretty much told you everything of note - we went to the park, he spent all day showing off, and messed up his ankle, _again_.” His mother smiled at him with a particular smile, and he knew she had another card up her sleeve. _Why does she insist we discuss every irrelevant detail of the day over dinner, every single night_.

“And what about this girl you were talking to? Verne said she was there for a while.”

“What? Oh, _her_. What about her?”

“Well, did she have a name?”

“Uh, Jessica, I think? She asked me what I was reading and where I went to school, that was all. I suppose she must live nearby. I told her we were from New Jersey, just as you and papa instructed. I did not say anything _suspicious_ to her.”

“Pfft, he _likes_ her, mama-”

Jules scowled at Verne, wishing he still had some peas left to launch across the table. “Oh do shut _up_ , Verne! You have no idea what either of us said, you were too busy breaking your stupid ankle again--”

“It's not _broken_ , skunkhead, it's just _sprained_ , and you _were_ over there makin' goo-goo eyes, anyone could see that from the _moon!_ ”

“I was _not_ \--”

“Boys, _enough_!” Jules sat back in his chair, his mother's admonishment enough to silence him. Verne, however, braced his hands on the table and leaned up, clearly lining up another insult to launch, but his mother's hand on his shoulder pushing him back into his seat finally got the message across. “If either of you want any of the ice cream in the freezer, you'll stop arguing now! And Verne, it's very rude to speculate about other people like that!”

Their father stood up, stacking dishes and glasses up to cart over to the sink and begin washing. Their mother kept her hand firmly on Verne's shoulder for another minute until he finally stopped fidgeting.

“Jules, I'm glad to hear you're making new friends. Did she say where she went to school? You'll be starting at Hill Valley Middle School in a couple of months, after all, it would be nice for you to know at least one person on the first day.”

“She did say she went to the middle school, yes. She wants to show me around town tomorrow afternoon. I, uh, suppose I might go. If the weather remains fair.”

Verne smirked and laughed nastily, but their mother's renewed grip on his shoulder warned him off. “That's fine, dear, just don't stay out too late, and make sure the two of you stick together. I don't want you wandering off too far by yourself. This town isn't exceptionally dangerous but you never know what people might do.”

“Ooh, mama, can I go too, can I, can I, _can I_?” Jules stared at his brother in slight horror, then at his mother, feeling suddenly trapped.

“Verne, why don't you spend tomorrow with me? I could use some help in the garden and I think maybe your brother needs some time to himself.”

Jules could practically see the impending protest forming behind Verne's lips, but mercifully his father's arrival with bowls, spoons, and a carton of chocolate ice cream distracted him entirely. If there was one thing you could always count on to hold Verne's full attention, it was dessert.

* * *

1988 was still months away, but in Clara's mind, August was the logical beginning of the year. In her previous life (as she'd come to think of it), she'd be rushing to finish readying her little one-room schoolhouse for the return of her pupils, cleaning and repairing books and slates and checking the supplies of chalk. Hill Valley had been a young town, then, and while they'd long finished the city hall and clock tower by the time they'd departed, it had retained the feel of a frontier settlement. People had spilled out of the local train station on a regular schedule, filling up the town and the countryside surrounding it at an almost frightening pace. Some of those arrivals were, of course, entire families. Clara recalled sharply the last year she'd spent teaching there, in the Hill Valley she knew. She'd had pupils ranging in age from six to sixteen, including her own boys, and the schoolhouse had become rather cramped as she kept squeezing in more chairs and desks to accommodate their ever-growing numbers.

Clara paused to check her knitting. She was apt to drop stitches when her mind wandered, but the woolen cap looked as it should, so she cast off the last row, trimmed the yarn, and dropped it into the bag at her feet with the half-dozen others she'd finished since starting early that morning. They were destined for a local women's shelter, who'd sent out a call for donations, and would hopefully make the upcoming winter a little less unbearable for those who passed through.

Clara recalled a sharp argument with the father of a very bright and promising ten year old girl at the end of her last year in that schoolhouse, who had decided his child had learned more than enough to be getting on with, and refused to send her back in the fall. “Her mother needs help with the young'uns,” was the typical excuse. (Her brother, barely a year older, would _of course_ return.) The man had smugly claimed that Clara was speaking above her station by even questioning his decision, and would never understand anyway, as she had only a sparse two children and no daughters, and had all but said outright that she was, in his esteemed view, an example of total failure of Womanhood. Clara had come home that evening in a boiling temper, even snapping at Emmett. She'd apologized to him immediately, and he'd already forgiven her as he always did. It was hardly the first time she'd had to deal with such attitudes, and her successes in swaying the opinions of such parents were rather patchwork at best. Some could be brought around; many were too set in their ways and prejudices to be moved. She wondered whether another teacher had been found in time for the next year after she and her husband had suddenly moved away, and if little Eliza had ever been given any further opportunity to use her God-given talents for something more than washing her younger siblings' soiled laundry.

Clara glanced up at one of her husband's numerous clocks. It was approaching one o'clock. She'd skipped lunch, but frankly had no appetite anyhow. Her sons had decided to head back to the park down the road that morning, determined to enjoy their remaining days of freedom before school started, and she did not expect them back before supper time. Her husband? Who knew. His prototype 'time-slider' had been completed and he'd taken it out for a test run. She trusted him not to do anything too overly reckless, but she'd had misgivings about the gadget from the moment he'd first explained what it was and how it worked.

He wasn't alone, of course. Marty McFly had accompanied him on this particular venture. The young man was, somewhat inexplicably, her much older husband's dearest friend. A more unlikely pair she could not imagine, really, but clearly it worked for them. She had certainly grown fond of Marty as well and she'd learned a bit more about him since coming to the 20th century. He fronted a popular music group called “The Pinheads” who routinely produced a cacophony broadly referred to as “Rock & Roll.” Marty had gamely attempted to tutor her in the art form, bringing boxes full of phonograph records by apparently famous figures with names like “Little Richard” and “Elvis Presley” to the Brown homestead on the regular. Some of it was recognizable enough as an offshoot of the blues and gospel music she'd once associated with the black communities springing up around New Jersey and beyond, built by recent arrivals out of a hostile post-war South in search of better opportunities up North. Quite a lot of it was simply incomprehensible to her. Verne seemed to enjoy, though.

Marty McFly had missed his 'old' family, the version of them who had not been quite so successful as the one she'd seen. He'd told her, in brief terms at least, what his own memories of the past were. She could still remember the day she and her husband had arrived in the 20th century, and the distress that Marty had been in for some time afterward, culminating in an evening with the young man wedged between them on an old sofa in her husband's garage, trying to control his grief at the loss of something which, technically speaking, had never existed.

Not here, anyway. But somewhere. _Somewhere_. Clara had always been good with numbers, had even taught herself some algebra, geometry, and trigonometry out of books as a teenager in the full throes of an obsession with astronomy and the natural world, but the mathematics of this were beyond her learning. Her husband had even spent some time grumbling and cursing when trying to work the formulas, and had made a few awkward phone calls to old colleagues from his days at CalTech to discuss “theory” (he'd been rather deliberately vague on where his interests were coming from) of how time and, fundamentally, reality itself, worked.

Parallel realities, histories running alongside one another like railroad tracks. Even small changes could result in an entirely different trajectory for individuals and even the world as a whole, apparently. It was exactly the sort of thing her husband's imagination would run wild with. Clara, however, had serious misgivings about opening this particular Pandora's Box. After all, she knew that she was meant to be dead. Eastwood Ravine was, rightfully speaking, _Clayton_ Ravine, a memory turned into folklore fodder for children's gallows humor whenever they were annoyed at their teachers. And her husband had been shot to pieces by men he'd deceived to get what he needed for his invention. To think that he intended to take Marty McFly and his curiously incongruent memories back to this other world, where neither of them lived!

Clara had never been a particularly pious woman, but she nonetheless whispered a quiet prayer to a God she wasn't entirely sure existed for the safe return of her husband and his young friend.

* * *

Most of the time, Emmett Brown was very much a man of the present. He always had at least one project going, and often two or three on the back-burner of his mind, chugging along in the purely theoretical until he got around to the practical work. He kept his mind busy, as well as his hands, and it had served him well for decades. He'd learned young that time spent idle never did him much good. _Give your brain something to chew on, Emmett Brown, or it will chew on itself._

He enjoyed traveling in the past, literally speaking of course, a pastime now much easier with another DeLorean car conversion at his disposal. The train was something of a Magnum Opus, a true work of art that had as much of his wife's hands in it as his own, making it all the more sentimental to him, but the convenience of the smaller vehicle couldn't be argued with. His own personal history, however, was hazardous geography, which he rarely visited even in his own memory, if he could avoid it. No, he preferred to focus on the present, and the future.

His most recent completed invention, however, the time-slider he'd called it, had been relegated to the back of a locked drawer in his laboratory, and he'd been contemplating for a while now whether or not he ought to simply destroy it entirely. Marty McFly had dropped by the Brown family home a few times since their disastrous little adventure with it, and he'd assured Emmett again and again that he was not angry with him. Emmett could see a kind of distance behind the young man's eyes that had not been there before, though, even if Marty was far too kind and forgiving to hold onto resentment over what his supposed friend had put him through. Clara assured him that things would become more normal with the passage of time, but Emmett wasn't certain he even deserved “normal” anymore after everything he'd done.

Marty had packed up again with his band a few days ago for another tour. They had their debut album now to promote, and would be gone for months. Marty had called him once already from a hotel room, to regale him with tales of life out on the road. He seemed to be in good spirits, if frantically busy, but it was hard to tell sometimes over a long-distance call.

As for Emmett himself, he was coping as well as he could, but some things just wouldn't seem to leave him alone. He had felt the object when Marty had given him a tight hug goodbye before driving off toward Los Angeles for The Pinheads' first set of shows. He'd caught sight of it a few times as well, and it always felt like a slight electric shock to his brain. He'd recognized it immediately, of course. His mother had worn it every day of her life until she'd passed away, when Emmett had put it up, unsure what he'd ever do with it, but unwilling to part with it. The small locket wasn't worth a great deal, but it was an old family heirloom from his mother's side, brought across the Atlantic with her. The one he'd known was still sitting in a drawer in an old cabinet at the back of his lab, undisturbed, and would probably be given to Jules or Verne at some point, if either of them decided they wanted it. It was, at the same time, a permanent fixture hanging around the neck of Marty McFly, ever just out of sight underneath his shirt, its slightly tarnished silver chain only catching the light if he leaned over. On a few occasions, it had slipped out of Marty's shirt entirely as he moved, only for the boy to quickly hide it away again. If he felt the need to hide it from Emmett, well, that was his own business. He wasn't quite the same as his counterpart in Marty's native timeline, and part of him wasn't sure he had any right to ask about it.

He'd actually forgotten entirely that he'd left the locket in his will to Marty, who at the time had been the only heir he'd had. He still considered Marty as good as his own, but Marty had living parents who were perfectly capable of seeing after his future, and Emmett had Jules and Verne to consider now. As such, he'd already had his will revised since returning to the 20th century to account for his wife and children, but clearly the original had been carried out in that other, parallel, lifetime.

He tried to put it all out of his mind, but had not had much luck. Emmett reached over to a small digital alarm clock on the nightstand, squinting until his eyes adjusted. It was just past two in the morning, and the house was quiet around him save for a slight breeze whistling through the branches of the trees outside. The house was still brand-new and did not settle and creak every night like the old mansion had. He rolled onto his back, trying to settle down. Modern air conditioning kept the house at a comfortable temperature even in early September when it was still hot outside, but he could feel the bedsheets sticking to his sweaty skin. He drew in and let out several deep breaths but could not stop a slight lingering tremor.

“You had that gosh-darn nightmare again, didn't you?”

Clara stirred beside him and Emmett screwed his eyes shut, feeling guilty for waking her on top of everything else. “I'm fine, love, it's just a dream.” A bad memory had warped into a bad dream, which had then turned into a recurring nightmare that varied somewhat in detail but never in overall theme. Sometimes he was standing in the parking lot of a Twin Pines (never Lone Pine) Mall, watching helplessly as Marty McFly screamed and cried over a slain old man he barely recognized as himself. Sometimes he was the old man laid out on the pavement, feeling himself grow cold and still as his best friend begged him not to leave him behind. Sometimes he was leaning over himself, looking into his own slackening face and dimming eyes as rapidly cooling blood soaked through his clothes. More recent permutations had substituted his father's corpse for his parallel-world counterpart, and himself for Marty. Tonight, the scene had played out like it had in the waking world, but rather than retreating to an empty motel room to await Marty's reappearance with news afterward, he found himself suddenly in the old Brown family mansion, being castigated by Erhardt Brown for his carelessness and disobedience, and strapped with his father's old black leather belt. A shadow of his mother had watched passively from a corner, her expression shuttered and unreadable. Recent and distant past had, in his subconscious, melded together into his own personal nocturnal trial. How fitting that his father, a lawyer by profession, should eventually appear for the prosecution.

He felt Clara shifting toward him before she reached out and pulled him into her embrace. He wrapped his arms around her in response and hid his face in the bend between her shoulder and neck, breathing in the familiar scent of her hair. “I'm sorry, dear, I didn't mean to wake you again.” He felt her fingers thread into his hair, combing through the white strands in a slow rhythm. He didn't think he'd be able to sleep again, but he tried to still himself, for his wife's sake if nothing else. He'd been rather exhausted lately, with constantly interrupted sleep, but he knew his wife was faring no better. He'd offered to sleep in the guest room a few nights ago. but she insisted she'd simply follow him there if he didn't come to bed with her. Emmett closed his eyes, certain he'd get no more rest tonight. When he opened them again, what felt like mere moments later, bright sunlight spilled across the room, accompanied by the sound of birds outside their window.

“Feeling better?”

Emmett hummed to himself against his wife's skin. “A bit. Although I suppose I could remain here a while longer.”

“Hmm. Sounds like a good plan. The boys can probably manage breakfast for themselves for once.”

When he awoke again, it was half past nine in the morning, and the sounds of his children arguing downstairs in the kitchen forced him to move, but he felt better than had in weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FWIW, I headcanon Jules as very much aroace. Verne's just a little shit sometimes who likes to wind up his brother.


End file.
